Running around Iowa today, Michele Bachmann has made sure to stress one important message at each stop: come to the Ames Straw Poll!

“Twenty-four hours we get to send a signal back to Washington D.C. about what we’ve been seeing, and that’s at Ames, Iowa,” she told a group gathered in Pella, Iowa.

“Barack Obama got his start in Iowa, remember? Iowa caucuses are where Barack Obama got his beginning. I think the Iowa straw poll and the Iowa caucuses should be where Barack Obama comes to his ending. Don’t all of you?” she asked a crowd assembled in Pella, Iowa, who cheered at her question.

“Iowa can make it happen,” Bachmann continued, “What we have the opportunity to do tomorrow is go to Ames, Iowa, and send a signal that is unmistakable, an unmistakable message that says Barack Obama, your time is up.”

Taking the Des Moines Register’s soapbox at the Iowa State Fair, she made sure her very brief speech (about two and a half minutes long) included an Ames mention.

“We want you there because tomorrow is the day we make the downpayment on taking the country back,” she told fairgoers.

Her entreaty there may not have played as planned. Many in the crowd seemed irritated that they had waited up to an hour to hear Bachmann (who was running 30 minutes late) speak so briefly. Other candidates, according to the complaining I overheard, had spoken for fifteen minutes or so.

Bachmann with her husband Marcus in Indianola, Iowa. She is holding a dollar bill, a prop that she uses (via folding slightly) to demonstrate how money is worth 12 percent less than it was a few years ago. Note the photographer who ducked into the bus and opened a window in order to shoot photos from that angle.